Jo-Ann Mort writes frequently about Israel and the Occupied Territories, most recently for The Washington Post opinion page and The New Republic about the current government.
Jo-Ann Mort
By Jo-Ann Mort
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Culture The Age of Idealism, Debunked
WE HAD IT SO GOOD By Linda Grant Scribner, 336 pages, $25 ‘The personal is political” was the political headline for the international feminist movement, and it could just as well be the takeaway phrase of this intriguing new work by British novelist Linda Grant. Chronicling three generations among families, Grant, a former journalist-turned-novelist known…
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News Heroes and Villains, Key Players Who Made a Difference
Clara Lemlich In November 1909, thousands of New York City garment workers convened a mass meeting at Cooper Union to protest sweatshop conditions. The norm in the burgeoning garment industry included 60- to 80-hour work weeks, flammable scraps strewn around the shops, child labor and providing your own supplies, such as scissors and thread. During…
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Culture A Surreal-ist and a Journal-ist
Adonis: Selected Poems Translated by Khaled Mattawa Yale University Press, part of the Margellos World Republic of Letters, 432 pages, $30 Journal of an Ordinary Grief By Mahmoud Darwish Translated by Ibrahim Muhawi Archipelago Books, 175 pages, $16 Though their styles are distinct, poets Adonis and Mahmoud Darwish are two of the Arab world’s modern…
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Israel News The Kibbutz at 100
The kibbutz, one of the grand social and economic experiments of the past century, was once a symbol of a liberal, humanistic Israel. Today, the kibbutzim, in their 100th year, have been profoundly transformed, and the face of Israel is a different kind of settlement — the West Bank settlement that seeks to build “facts…
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Culture Friction Where Heaven Meets Earth
Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem’s Sacred Esplanade Edited by Oleg Graber and Benjamin Z. Kedar University of Texas Press, 412 pages, $75. This book of authoritative essays, artwork and photographs is a labor of scholarly love that, through the joint intellectual efforts of Jewish, Muslim and Christian scholars, brings down to earth the heavenly…
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Culture Mahmoud Darwish: If He Were Another
If I Were Another Poems by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Fady Joudah Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 240 pages, $28.00. A River Dies of Thirst By Mahmoud Darwish, translated from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham Archipelago Books, 168 pages, $16.00. Two summers ago, I dined at a Ramallah restaurant with a Fatah leader. I ordered Taibeh,…
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Opinion Bringing Our Labor Legacy to Life
On November 22, 1909, thousands of shirtwaist workers gathered at Cooper Union’s Great Hall on the Lower East Side. The workers were mostly girls in their teens and early 20s, the bulk of them Eastern European Jewish immigrants. They had convened to discuss how to address the inhumane conditions they faced in their factories. Before…
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Culture Balkan Beauty
People of the Book By Geraldine Brooks Viking, 372 pages, $25.95. In her new novel, “People of the Book,” Geraldine Brooks compresses six centuries of history and transforms them into a fast-moving mystery novel. Brooks’s engaging, intensely researched historic tale is based on the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, a book that originated in pre-Inquisition…
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